December 30, 2009

Interesting green-screen montage

I’m kind of astonished at the amount of digital compositing that now goes on, as shown in this set of clips. Sure, in many of these cases it makes obvious sense, but in others, was it really easier/more cost-effective to do a composite than just to have the crew walk outside? Apparently so.

December 25, 2009

Merry Christmas, everyone

Wherever you are, and whatever holidays you may celebrate this time of year, I wish you great peace and happiness. Thanks for reading & for making it possible for me to do this fascinating, frustrating, often greatly rewarding job.
Oh, and our toddler Finn just walked up and would like you to know:

bvvdddgr xzxgm//jgzzzzzzzzzzzzafhh hmmm/k;/;’\dsamnnnnn .mvbj. wq

I’d like to think he’s working on a highly sophisticated encryption algorithm, but somehow I doubt it. :-) (Note to self: Time to fire up AlphaBaby.)
All the best for the rest of ’09 and a great start to 2010,
J.

December 23, 2009

Doing the right thing with Cmd-H

Here’s another little glimpse into the future:

As I’ve written previously, when OS X took over long-standing Photoshop shortcuts, it created a tricky situation: break Photoshop users’ habits/flow by changing PS to match the OS, or deviate from the new OS conventions?

In Photoshop CS4 we changed Cmd-` (Cmd-~) to cycle among open documents, matching the standard Mac convention (while continuing to honor the Windows-standard convention, Ctrl-Tab, as well). As expected, it’s been a painful move for some customers*, but sometimes that’s necessary.

With regard to Cmd-H, Photoshop’s keyboard shortcut editor has long made it possible to assign Cmd-H to hiding the app. Doing so takes just a few seconds, yet many people are unaware of this or unwilling to invest the time. Therefore our plan is that in the future, the dialog you see above will pop up once (on Mac only) the first time you hit Cmd-H, asking which behavior you prefer. Special thanks to John Gruber (who independently suggested this solution) for offering the team some timely words of encouragement.

Yes, in terms of these little tweaks, there’s always much more to be done, but we made some good progress in CS4 and plan to make even more in the future. I thought you’d like to see a little proof of that commitment.

* It’s possible to switch shortcuts back by dropping in a plug-in/running a registry entry (here’s the download). In the future we plan to make it easier to control this preference inside Photoshop.

December 21, 2009

The littlest things

[Warning: Contents may cause excruciating boredom.]
I switched from Microsoft Entourage (sorry, old friend) to Apple Mail a few weeks ago*, and I’m almost embarrassed to note my favorite “feature”: Mail doesn’t abusively “help” me by inserting a space before pasted text. Entourage would drive me crazy with that behavior, especially when putting URLs between parenthesis.
On the other hand, I loved how Entourage would auto-insert the correct accent when I’d type “vis-à-vis” (<–pretentious much? sorry). Maybe more importantly, when I'd tab from the address field to the message body, Entourage would remember the previously active insertion point in the body text. (Who cares? I care, as apparently I tweak addresses/subject lines with some frequency.) And Entourage would also keep everybody on the "To" line when replying to all.
Why am I boring you with this? Okay, yes, things are a bit quiet in the office today, but I also want you to know that I'm a perfectionist. I'm writing up a long and hopefully thoughtful piece about the Photoshop UI (responding to recent posts**), and “sweating the details” is a big, big deal to me–and to many of my colleagues. More interesting bits to come.*Why? By not relying on one giant database, Mail should play better with Time Machine (and, I’m hoping, be less vulnerable to global freak-outs).
** Let’s not try to delve into a discussion of those other points yet. Sit tight. I’m writing a lot.

December 20, 2009

Photography Quote o’ The Day

Regarding HDR & its discontents: “This style of tone mapping has become synonymous with HDRI in a way that isn’t good at all. It’s as if T-Pain’s Auto-Tune tracks were the blanket description for ‘music.'” — Author Jack Howard, who’s just started an HDR group on Facebook. Check out Jack’s tutorials (one, two) on “soft” tonemapping techniques.

PS Elements voted Photography Gadget of the Decade

Viewers of Channel 5’s Gadget Show have voted Photoshop Elements Photography Gadget of the Decade. On behalf of the Elements team, wow, and thanks, everyone! Evidently I can’t watch the video from within the US, but I’m told that Elements gets mentioned about 5 minutes into it. [Via Emma Wilkinson]

December 18, 2009

See how Photoshop & Adobe apps helped make Avatar

“Literally the first piece of software we went out and purchased was Photoshop…”
Check out this 2-minute overview of how PS, Lightroom, After Effects, and other Adobe tools were used in the production of Avatar:

Adobe’s Mike Kanfer won an Academy Award working with James Cameron on Titanic & has been a great conduit of information during the making of Avatar. Too bad I never did manage to twist his arm & get behind the scenes during shooting…
Ah well: this morning the Photoshop team is off to see Avatar–a welcome little break from the whole march to Cocoa. I justified it to my wife, saying, “Well, they used Photoshop to make the movie.” Raising a dubious, I-know-you’re-all-cutting-class eyebrow, she asked, “Don’t they use Photoshop to make every movie?” Hush, woman!!
[Update: Evidently Photoshop co-creator John Knoll was the Avatarvisual effects supervisor at ILM.]Semi-related bonus fun thing: Slate talks about Cameron nearly dying while making The Abyss, punching & then firing a rescue diver.

December 17, 2009

Camera Raw 5.6, Lightroom 2.6 now available

Camera Raw (Mac | Win) and Lightroom (Mac | Win) have been updated to versions 5.6 and 2.6, respectively. These releases add new camera support for the following models:

Canon EOS 1D Mark IV

Canon EOS 7D

Canon PowerShot G11

Canon PowerShot S90

Leaf Aptus II 5

Mamiya DM22, DM28, DM33, DM56, M18, M22, M31

Nikon D3s

Olympus E-P2

Pentax K-x

Panasonic FZ38

Sigma DP1s

Sony A500

Sony A550

Sony A850

See the Lightroom Journal for additonal release notes. As always, you can use the free (and now updated) DNG Converter (Mac | Win) to make files from these cameras compatible with older versions of Photoshop & Lightroom, as well as other DNG-savvy software.
[Update: Added the Canon EOS 1D Mark IV that I’d originally neglected to mention.]

Inspector panels: Food for thought

In previous entries I’ve noted the need for a properties inspector/editor in Photoshop:

The richness that’s possible in a PSD file has totally outstripped the Layers panel’s ability to display & control it. […] Photoshop needs a properties inspector, a panel that lets you view & adjust the parameters of the selected object. […] Such a panel can supplant & control other dedicated panels, making it possible to display more info & yet fewer panels on screen.

New panels in CS4–Adjustments, Masks, and 3D–represent movement in this direction. It’ll take time to unify things more fully.
I mention this because I happened across UI designer Keith Lang’s inspector ideas & thought you might find them interesting:

Some of the details remind me of what’s been shown in Adobe’s interesting “Rome” application sneak peek (worth popping into full-screen mode):

New Photoshop contest from Deke McClelland

Create a magnificent piece of artwork that celebrates your favorite features of Photoshop. But you must do so using not fewer than three of the Top 40 Features I’ve posted so far. (Note that you’ll need to be a member of dekeOnline to participate so that you can post your artwork and include comments.)

3D face + augmented reality business card

December 14, 2009

How could we improve Photoshop for iPhone developers?

If you use Photoshop in conjunction with mobile development (iPhone or otherwise) and have ideas on how we could streamline your workflow, please let us know. It’s not as if we lack ideas, but rather than risk biasing your responses, I’ll leave the query open-ended. If there’s feedback you’d prefer to send directly, I’m jnack at adobe.
Thanks,
J.

Download Photoshop help as PDF

Here’s a small but potentially useful bit of info: you can download a PDF copy of the help for Photoshop CS4 by clicking the “View Help PDF” link in the top-left corner of the app help page. (And, what the heck, here’s the direct link.) The same is be true for other Adobe applications.

This is obviously handy if you’re frequently working offline. In the future, you’ll be able to download help content right from within the new Adobe desktop help app, currently available for testing via Adobe Labs.

December 10, 2009

Photo nerdery for a good cause

If you’re looking for a really unique holiday gift for the photographer on your list (or you just want a really cool t-shirt that nobody else will have), AND you totally love the idea that 100% of the profits go to feeding and caring for kids in a orphanage in Kenya that you guys helped to build (see below), then man have I got a holiday gift idea for you!

WebKit & Creative Suite extensibility

Hey, what if I told you that to offer consistent, Suite-wide extensibility we’d ditched Flash Player and had gone with WebKit instead? Would we hear a bunch of attaboys about open standards, HTML5, etc.? Would Mac aficionados in particular cheer Adobe’s embrace of an open source, largely Apple-driven initiative?

Good, because we are indeed embracing WebKit for extensibility. We just happened to keep Flash as an option, too. (The union of the two is at the heart of Adobe AIR, and that’s what we’ll leverage going forward.) Now, let the touch-of-gray-finding begin…

December 09, 2009

Photoshop.com Mobile makes Time’s Top 10

According to team lead Geoff Baum, “The app surpassed 4 million downloads this week and has been the #1 app in many App Stores around the globe, including the US, France, Japan, and Italy, among many others.”

Adobe TV: Masking, cloning, and more

This episode of Designing Minds features industry-praised photographer Ben Watts. In the first of a two-part series, Ben discusses the power of photography and how his love for the craft enables him to capture timelessness in a frame. He goes on to discuss how the streets and youth of New York City influenced his early work, later shaping his process and practice for commercial work.

The Clone Stamp tool got one of the best upgrades in CS4. The Clone Stamp brush now has a preview that let’s you see exactly what you’re about to paint with and exactly where to place the newly cloned area.

December 08, 2009

Expert tip on lighting a kid for holiday photos

Psst… want some Uggs?

You know, I’ve heard that Ugg boots can let us warm and comfortable. So If you want to buy some gifts to you lovers or friends.I think is a right choose.
Ugh. Apparently spammers now know the answer to “2+2.” Unfortunately it seems that Movable Type’s* anti-spam features (at least as we’re using them) are completely ineffective. When I try to batch-delete these messages, the server times out with an error.
Anyway, if you’re subscribing to the blog’s comment feed, sorry about this.*No need to tell me to use some other blog software, thanks; that’s not my call.

December 03, 2009

Video: Excellent stop-motion paper animation

New panel, scripts let you batch-eliminate “copy” in PS layer names

God bless scripters and the spirt of “Just Do It.” Responding to reader feedback here about the desire to remove “copy” from duplicated layers, scripter Mike Hale used Configurator to create a simple panel (screenshot) that does just that–nuking “copy {#}” from all layers or just the selected layers.

The panel for Photoshop CS4 is downloadable from PS-Scripts.com. It’s wrapped as an MXP file, meaning you can simply double click it to install it using Adobe Extension Manager. After installing the panel, relaunch Photoshop and look under Window->Extensions for “RemoveCopy.”

Sometimes Extension Manager doesn’t play well with Vista (as I think it requires you to be logged in as an administrator), so I’ve posted the panel in a simple ZIP package as well. You can unzip the contents, then place the panel folder into “Adobe Photoshop CS4/Plug-ins/Panels.”

You might want to use the scripts on their own (not via the panel), especially if you like to assign keyboard shortcuts to commands. You might also want to use them in CS3 or older versions of Photoshop. Therefore I’ve posted just the scripts as well. Drag the expanded contents to “Adobe Photoshop CS{whatever}/Presets/Scripts,” then relaunch PS. Once they’re installed, you can choose Edit->Keyboard Shortcuts & assign shortcuts if you’d like.

Thanks to fellow coders Trevor Morris and Jeff Tranberry for their quick help in making this happen. Please give Mike props & speak up if you encounter any problems.

Demo: Next-gen GPU optimizations in Adobe video apps

In the video you’ll see incredible AVCHD playback and scrubbing, working with DSLR cameras like the Canon 5D & 7D, 9 Layers of P2, Native Red 4K Multicam editing and RED keying and lastly, you see accelerated rendering for exports.